The Trip

1st Leg - Perth to Hong Kong
5/10/04 - Lots of long boring queuing for check in, security, customs, boarding. I didn't sleep long enough last night and now (midday, 20 minutes before take-off) I'm starting to feel tired. I was too tense until now to feel the tiredness. When I went through the security check, I set off the alarm. Someone told me to take off my shoes and put them on the X-ray conveyor belt while I walked through again in my socks. This time no problem. Rosemary picked me up right on time but wanted me to plait her hair and have another look at her tax assessment before we left. I was feeling quite tightly strung but I was able to remain calm while I did what she wanted.

On board, awating take-off: considering this is an international flight, the seats are very small and cramped.

Disappointing not to have a window seat. I'm in the centre block, 4 seats across but on the aisle which could be either good or bad. Not sure what I think about these little screens on the backs of the seats. Bit hard to watch if you have a fidgetty person in front of you.

Take-off plus 10 minutes: I love the moments of take-ff, when the ground drops away, tilting at crazy angles, and you see your city spread out below you.

Now we're flying above strangely solid looking clouds.

Next to me in the other 3 seats is a Chinese family of parents and one little girl. The father fell asleep within the first half hour, after eating some food he'd brough onto the plane with him. I don't feel as if I'll be able to sleep at all because the conditions are so cramped, but I suppose by the early hours of the morning I'll be tired enough not to be able to stay awake. I certainly hope so.

I can't believe I was so nervous about getting to the aiport and being passed through the various procedures. Oh well, next time it will all feel like a piece of cake.

Jen was at the airport to see me off. She told me about missing a plane in the US because of ignoring the request to be at the airport 2 hours before take off. They had to queue for ages and just as they'd nearly reached the head of the line the doors were shut in their faces: "No, sorry, we told you to be here 2 hours ahead of time."

It's cold in here. I might have to put on my spare top as well as wrap up in the airline blanket.

1 pm. Have to remember to do leg exercises every hour or so. Rosemary told me she got very bad leg aches when she went to Japan. The airline shows a video of exercises supposedly for passengers to do to help avoid DVT, but they're shown being done by a man in an open air park, not on a plane, and some of them would not be possible in a plane.

My legs are definitely too long. How ro really tall people cope?

Thank goodness they've turned off the TV for the time being. Though it was interesting seeing the map of where we're going and where we are, and seeing the statistics: altitude, speed, outside temperature etc.

They've been around with drinks and little packets of peanuts (which I didn't eat). We've been given a lunch and refreshments menu, so I wonder what time lunch will be?

The guy next to me keeps sniffing. Euw! I have to put up with another 6 hours of this!

No wonder it's cold in here. By watching the video on the seat next to me (because I didn't want to turn on my own TV) I learnt that it's -47C outside. We're at 36,000 feet, flying at something over 800km/hour.

Sniff - sniff - sniff - Aargghh!

2:30 pm - The departure gate at Perth airport is something. First you see all the fancy shops, duty free etc, then you go around a corner and come to a bare, stark looking, strictly functional door which could just as easily be the entrance to a prison. Once through there's a sort of no man's land (customs), before you go up to the actual departure lounge, which has more shops and is quite comfortable looking, although I was only in it for 10 to 15 minutes and didn't even sit down.

Lunch - not bad, although not generous. I had chicken Provencale - very tasty - with mashed potatoes and very well done carrots and broccoli. I didn't like the starter of shrimp cocktail, but the dessert of chocolate marble cake with a flavoured syrup was delicious.

5:30 pm - watched The Terminal, with Tom Hanks, a warm fuzzy movie. It passed the time. I'm feeling very tired and headachey now, not at all looking forward to the next leg (Hong Kong to LA). I'm still not relaxed enough to sleep.

Hong Kong Airport - 8 pm to 11:25 pm - by the time I got off the plane (not hurrying) and wandered along to my departure gate via a security check, it was after 8:30 so a bit less time to wait.

I'm feeling a bit weird. The adrenalin and tensions of the past few days has worn off, but I'm not quite relaxed enough to sleep. I think I was feeling some motion sickness by the end of the first leg: as we started to descend for landing, I felt hot flushes plus nausea which lingered for a while after I got here. I should probably avoid writing, reading and watching the TV on the next leg. (I did enjoy seeing the Kath & Kim episode the The Sketch Show after the movie, though).

A bit earlier, while I was sprawled out trying to relax, I felt a sort of spasm of depression at the though of the 14 hour flight in front of me, but it's passed now. If only I can sleep for a good part of it.

All that worry turned out to be for nothing. HK airport was a breeze to navigate, and now I'm right at the departure gate. It's a huge airport but all the signs are really big and you get pretty well shepherded along where necessary. Of course, it's late at night so there aren't huge crowds of people around.

Here's a weird thing: if Sally is waking up around now, she can be thinking she'll see me today, but for me our meeting is still not till tomorrow.

LA, Wednesday morning: Ironically, our pilot from Perth to HK was British, possibly Scottish, while our pilot from HK to LA was Australian.

Unreal day yesterday. They kept all the cabin lights turned off all day, or until about 9:30 HK time which was 2 hours before we landed in LA at 8:30 pm local time, so we just didn't really have any day. Nobody near me even opened the window blinds until one woman opened hers an hour or 2 before landing (I would have if I'd had a window seat). The flight was far more comfortable than I'd expected, because there were a lot of spare seats and I had a spare seat beside me to spread out over.

I'm kind of dazed about being here. Managed to get a few hours sleep on the plane in spite of a baby screaming every hour or so, and then a few more hours here, mainly between 5 am and 8 am here when it would have been latish evening in Perth. Avoiding reading, writing and watching TV seemed to solve the motion sickness problem.

Getting on to the flight from LA to Dulles proved about the most stressful part of my trip so far. We kept having to stand in long queues for baggage checks and security checks. I was pretty much leaving everything to Sally which wasn't really fair since she hadn't had to go through any of the procedures before either. We had just caught the shuttle bus from our hotel, thinking there was one every ten minutes, but it turned out they only run half hourly. If we'd missed that one, we would have missed our flight, because by the time we got through all the queues it was only about 20 minutes before the flight.

Washington DC, Sunday 10th October: Today we went downtown on the Metro and walked the length of the National Mall. We intended to go up the Washington Monument but it's closed for renovations until early 2005. We walked along to the Lincoln Memorial past the World War II Memorial. We had sort of planned to have a look at the Vietnam Memorial but there were really long queues and in view of the fact that I've had a few episodes of faintness since arriving we decided standing in a queue wouldn't be a good idea.

From the Lincoln Memorial we walked all the way back to the Capitol, stopping to have a ride on a Carousel half way along and finishing up at Union Station where we caught the Metro for home. It was a glorious clear sunny autumn day, very much like a fine winter day at home.

I drove for a couple of blocks this morning. The car was automatic which was easier than having to change gears with my opposite hand, but even so it was hard. In the evening I drove the manual car, which was much harder. The instinct to reach for the indicators with my right hand and the gears with my left is incredibly strong.

After getting back from downtown we went for a drive out into the country. It's really beautiful - green, rolling, lush forested country which reminds me in places of Marysville or Walpole/Denmark, or even of Collie.